Chapter Text
“Rachel!”
I heard my name and opened my eyes. How long had I been out? There was blood dribbling down the side of my face and a disorienting ache in my forehead. Must be a concussion. Nothing I hadn’t dealt with before.
I felt the rapid steps of my opponent rushing towards me to finish the job, but I didn’t move yet. He thought I was down – an easy target. Let him underestimate the threat. Once he was practically on top of me, I sprang back to life! I kicked his legs out from under him, managing to roll out of the way as he hit the ground. We both got back up, facing each other.
“Rachel, you’re hurt! Stand down.”
I could hear the voice, but it didn’t register. I was too mad. I ran towards him, swinging wildly. My vision was still spotty. He ducked my punches easily, then landed another powerful jab in my stomach.
“Ooof!” I doubled over from the blow. My opponent backed away and I charged again. He was bigger than I was, but I caught him off-balance. I knocked him over, landing on top and hitting everything I could reach.
I could still win!
Then he grabbed my arm, twisting it around until I heard a loud POP!
“AAAAAAARRRRGH” I screamed in pain. I kept hitting him with the one good arm I had left, but to little effect. He rolled me over my dislocated shoulder onto my stomach, then pinned my good arm behind my back. I thrashed as violently as I could, but he was too big. I couldn’t get him off.
“I said stand down, Rachel.”
I let out a roar of frustration. My adrenaline was already dropping. I started to feel all the pain I’d been ignoring: the bloody knuckles, the throbbing in my head, the bumps and bruises that seemed to cover every inch of my body. Not to mention the dislocated arm.
As the pain crept in, I remembered where I was. I wasn’t a desperate warrior lost in the heat of battle. I was a weak human girl getting my butt kicked in what had started out as a friendly sparring session. Until I had lost control. Again.
For years, I had been the Animorphs fiercest soldier in the fight against the Yeerks. Even in a quiet, secret war, sometimes you need a little chaos and destruction. And when it came to destruction, I was Team Earth’s sledgehammer. But eventually the world found out about the Yeerk invasion, and things got a little bigger than claw-to-claw combat. We went from killing single digits of the enemy at a time to killing by the thousands. After that, it didn’t take long for them to surrender.
So why was a celebrated warrior like me losing a fistfight in a sweaty warehouse-turned-gym? Well, once the Yeerks were under control, the only job openings left on Earth for human sledgehammers involved working for crime lords, terrorists, or questionable military campaigns. Trust me, I looked. And unfortunately for the crime lords, I’m a righteous warrior – not a mercenary. So I tried to move on. Instead of chaos and destruction, I had fistfights against the nice, fake enemies like Kyle that I managed to pick up at the gym.
I knew it was good that the war ended when it did. Back when I was fighting the Yeerks, every day the bloodthirsty part of me took more and more space, replacing piece-by-piece the girl I’d once been. I was the only one of the ‘good guys’ eager for an open war, a final showdown. Jake and the others thought I was just out for blood, and maybe I was. But more than that, I was afraid that the longer we fought, the less likely it was that anything of the real me would be left by the time it all ended.
Once the Yeerk threat was gone, the time of submitting to my inner warrior – or ‘Mean Rachel’, as my friends had once named her – was over. I’d never get rid of her completely. Even if I could, I wouldn’t want to. You don’t need to be fighting for your life to appreciate the benefits of limitless bravery. But if I had any chance at living a normal life, I needed Mean Rachel out of the driver’s seat. I had to rebuild those parts of me that had burned away in the heat of battle. Including the part that knew when to quit.
“Fine, it’s over,” I mumbled as I stopped squirming and accepted defeat. “You can get off me now.”
“Only if you promise not to hit me again.” Kyle laughed.
“Have you ever wondered how far an elephant can throw a man?” I snapped. “Because if you’re not off me in two seconds, you’re about to find out.”
Apparently he wasn’t feeling curious, because he finally let go. I managed to roll onto my back, where I could see him smiling down at me. Kyle had a cute smile. He almost looked like Harvey Kinkle, if Harvey buzzed his hair and put on enough muscle to star in one of those Tae Bo videos.
Kyle grabbed my good arm to help me sit up. “Do you even have nerve endings? I’ve had my shoulder dislocated before, that’s supposed to hurt.”
“After you’ve had your limbs ripped off a few times, I guess dislocation just isn’t that big a deal,” I lied, grimacing through the shooting pain in my shoulder.
“Not a big deal, huh? Well if you’re in no hurry to morph your injuries away, we could always do some drills…”
It was a challenge. A stupid challenge, but a challenge nonetheless. Even before the war, I lived for challenges. I could remember that much about myself.
“Sure. Why not?” I tried to stand up again, but my concussion must have been worse than I thought. I wobbled, and Kyle caught me easily before I hit the floor. His smile gave way to a look of concern, and I felt an unwelcome flutter as he held me in his muscular arms.
“On second thought, maybe I should morph now,” I mumbled. He set me down as I started to shrink. I felt another loud POP as my shoulder went back into place, followed by the cracking and crunching of bones changing form. My long, blonde ponytail shrank into short black fur. Up close, my whiskers looked like needles shooting out from still-human cheeks. I was a freakish, half-Rachel, half-feline monster.
Kyle looked considerably less cute with a look of revulsion on his face. Just as I’d been hoping. Usually when I needed to heal, I’d just morph another human. It was way less gross than morphing anything else, and I had dozens of options floating around in my veins. Once we didn’t have to keep our morphing secret anymore, it was easy to just ask people “Hey, can I borrow some DNA?”
But the problem with a human morph was that it might still appreciate Kyle’s insanely cute dimples and exposed six-pack abs. New, raw human instinct might even want him to take me in his arms again and…
Movement! I lost my train of thought as the morph finished and the cat mind kicked in, distracted by the people walking around the gym. It took me a moment to gain control, but I tried not to lose the cat’s cool temperament. I looked back at Kyle with new indifference. Fluffer McKitty wasn’t impressed by dimples.
Tobias had been away for several torturously long weeks, and I was obviously getting antsy for companionship of the human male variety. Which was kind of ironic, really, seeing as the boy I loved spent more time as a hawk than a human. At least he was human enough of the time to keep me from gawking after the Kyles of the world like some desperate teenybopper.
<Grab my shoes and my gloves,> I directed Kyle via private thought speak. <You can put them with the rest of my stuff.> I was a cat now, and he was just another creature who existed to serve me.
“Hey, no pets in here!” I heard the gym owner yell our way.
<I’m not a pet, just Rachel.>
“No animals, then. My place, my rules.” The owner was a grump, but at least he usually left me alone.
<I might understand if I was an elephant, but what does this guy have against cats?> I grumbled as I hopped up onto the bench where I’d left my gym bag. <I’m perfectly indoor-friendly.>
Kyle laughed. He reached down to scratch my head. “Poor kitty.”
It felt nice, but I didn’t want him thinking he could touch me. <This kitty does have claws, you know.>
He pulled his hand back. “Come on, you’ve done enough damage for one day. I already need an ice bath. We should do this again sometime, though. I need to redeem myself.”
<Redeem yourself? You had me pinned.>
“Yeah, but a ref might have called me on that arm twist. I need a clean win. How about next Tuesday?”
<Sure, it’s a…> I paused. Not a date. <I mean sure, Tuesday works for me.>
I worried that agreeing to see him again might give Kyle the wrong idea anyway, but it was hard finding an opponent his size who wasn’t afraid to hit me. My inner warrior found no relief in fighting someone my own size. If my adversary didn’t look like he could kick my butt, what was the point?
I waited until Kyle’s perfectly sculpted form disappeared from sight before returning to my own body.
"Tobias will be back in four more days, Rachel. Keep it together," I mumbled to myself. Tobias’s birth mother, Loren, invited him to join her on this giant road trip through a bunch of National Parks. Since she got her sight back, Loren was all about viewing the majestic wonders of Mother Earth, and I guess she needed a travel buddy. I hated the idea of Tobias being gone for so long, but there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it. After being abandoned by his mother for so many years, he couldn’t seem to help jumping at every scrap of affection she threw his way.
I closed my eyes and pictured my boyfriend. Not the red-tailed hawk but the human, with his reluctant smile and tortured eyes hiding the soul of a true warrior. My soul mate, if there is such a thing. Although I will admit that in my fantasies, Tobias always looked a little different than in real life: a few years older, a lot more muscles, and rocking the haircut he so desperately needed.
I’d asked Tobias ad nauseam about returning to human permanently, but those conversations always ended the same. He assured me that of course he was going to be human again, he just wasn’t ready yet.
I tried to be patient. But as Cassie likes to point out, patience isn’t exactly my strong suit. During the war, at least it made sense why he stayed a hawk. Tobias needed his morphing power to stay in the fight. Sure he had to eat rodents instead of Big-Macs and sleep in a tree, but what was that compared to defeating the Yeerks? Whatever the sacrifice, it was worth it.
But the war was over. He didn’t need to run aerial surveillance or fight in battle morphs. I guess Tobias had gotten too used to being a predator, the same way I got too used to being a soldier. Problem was, I couldn’t be a soldier anymore – just a girl who needed a nice, normal boyfriend to help build out my new, normal life.
I’d had a rush of optimism that Tobias would finally change after Cassie told us about using the Time Matrix. The Time Matrix is this incredible object that allows you to travel to any place or time in history. More power than you can imagine. And when she got her hands on it, Cassie used that power to save my life. Seems like a pretty menial task for a super-weapon, but I can’t complain. In some version of history that only she remembered, I went down fighting in the blazing glory of battle. I saved my friends, became a global hero, and was utterly and completely dead.
The current situation was kind of perfect, in a way. There was a part of me that always wanted a hero’s death. I believed that I could be the one to push to the very end of a fight, never back down. Now I know that I am. And better yet, I’m alive to appreciate it. It’s not like I actually wanted to die. My life since the war may have been confusing and frustrating, but it was a whole lot better than not existing at all.
When Tobias heard Cassie’s story, he was completely devastated by the very idea of any timeline where I was gone forever. It scared him into actually talking about our future together. Tobias had never been much of a romantic, but he finally told me with actual, coherent words how much he loved me. He said that all he wanted was to be together, that he couldn’t imagine life without me. I was thrilled! My mind was overrun with images of the future, just the two of us, happy and human and whole. Together.
Then his two hours ran short, and he turned back into a hawk.
So what could I do? I bought a house nestled up against some nice wilderness for Tobias to hunt in until he decided he was “ready”, whatever that meant. I was close to LA for work while Tobias tried to figure out his strange half-bird, half-human life. At least we finally had a place to ourselves. It was nice not having to worry about my mom busting in and asking what a hawk – or worse, a spandex-clad boy – was doing in my bedroom.
After everything that went on between Mom and I in the Hork-Bajir valley, we both knew it wasn’t a good idea for us to live under the same roof anymore. I didn't want to move in with Dad. Even if I wanted to, he was almost as unhappy with me as Mom was. He was proud of me for fighting, the way I always knew he would be, but I could tell he was still hurt that I'd saved her while abandoning him to the Yeerks. They barely put up a fight when I said I wanted to be emancipated. Mom even drew up the paperwork herself.
It was a lot of work, figuring out how to be an independent adult while at the same time searching for the girl I used to be. When I tried to remember the old Rachel, she felt so two-dimensional. I knew the old Rachel loved her family and friends. She cared about school and gymnastics. She liked to crush on cute boys while shopping at the mall. But it was hard figuring out how to translate those things into my new life. Crushing on guys was off the table, for obvious reasons. Gymnastics didn’t really do it for me anymore, and I didn’t want to go back to school. My family and friends still cared about me, but they could only handle so much of me at a time. Cassie always promised me I could call anytime, but we had been fighting off and on lately. I didn't want to push my luck
All that really left was shopping. At least my new house had a giant closet. Maybe I couldn’t hunt Yeerks anymore, but I’d be damned if I ever had to give up hunting sales.
Sales. The rush of grabbing the last sweater your size while the middle-aged lady eyeing it from across the display glares at you. The joy of finding a pair of shoes that are cute, on clearance, and comfortable on your slightly-too-wide feet. The satisfaction of watching your receipt grow longer as the register spits out discounts on top of discounts, perfectly matching your running mental estimate.
Not as thrilling as taking down a battalion of Hork-Bajir controllers, but still fun in its own way. Maybe shopping would help take the sting off of my latest defeat.